Big game industry players in serious games

Continuing the last post, XOS Technologies has implemented an idea I had almost four years ago to help train quarterbacks on American football teams. One of the most difficult things for quarterbacks isn't the athletic agility required - it's the decision-making and pattern recognition skills that allow them to make quick decisions. A microsecond is a lot of time in sports, so fast decision response time is critical to success. Believe it or not, there's credence to the phrase "smart quarterback". Anyway, XOS has captured a big market, and I'm sure they'll continue to provide excellent technologies to all major sports.

The second half was more of a discussion of how Electronic Arts has used its Sims label to expand its marketing reach as well as provide some good to the world. Some examples include:

The co-development deal with British Petroleum in SimCity Societies for climate education and effective energy development.

The One Laptop Per Child initiative, in which EA released the SimCity source code so the game could be put on the laptop. Only open source software goes on the laptop.

Alice, an open source educational program that teaches computer programming in a 3D environment through a drag-drop interface. EA gave Carnegie-Mellon, the Alice developers, the characers and animations for Alice to help give it a more contemporary look.

All of these are examples of how EA has helped the serious games market by licensing their technology (free or otherwise) to augment the quality of serious games while also engaging users with their brand.

So why doesn't EA get into the serious games business directly? The answer sounds pretty simple to me: they aren't in the serious games business; they are in the entertainment, hit-driven business.